Greyed Out
by Travithian Axile
Summary: One-shot, post-game. Too often the past comes back to bite you on the ass. Warning for weirdness, rambling, and angst.


**Title: **Greyed Out  
**Characters:** Tifa  
**Rating: **PG  
**Word Count: **1722  
**Summary: **The past is a sly beast, always running just that little bit behind, always _just _nipping at your heels_. _Tifa finds out the hard way. One-shot.

**Notes: **Honestly, I've wanted to write this for the longest time, and indeed an extremely rough draft sits somewhere back at home gathering dust. An interesting idea, but I didn't have the skill then to properly execute it, and I may not be doing it justice even now. Please tell me how it feels. I admit, it makes like zero sense at first. I assure you, however, it _is _going somewhere.

**edit: **I realized I had unforgivably failed to mention one of the sources of inspiration for this fic: T.S. Eliot's _The Hollow Men_, from which I took most of the section titles as well as some imagery. I have now remedied this. Good night.

* * *

**I: The Hollow Man**

_The sky had glowed orange that night._

Once, he would have woken up screaming, calling for someone, _anyone_—but in the long years between then and now he had learnt that such cries ended up dead and useless against the walls, scraping his throat raw for no good reason at all. So; he had learnt to endure, and slept on, twitching uneasily.

In the morning he went around puttering uselessly, forcing the ever-present anger down into a small glowing flame in his heart; good enough to keep it warm, good enough to keep him alive. There were times when he would catch himself coming out of a long, still trance, the sun gone brighter or darker, the shadows changed, as though he were nothing but a piece of flotsam tossed here and there by the whim of a roaring river. Sometimes he went under, only to come back, _claw _back, tell himself: It's not finished yet.

He would touch the sword, then, for reassurance. It was there, solid, grounded in reality. He could almost imagine its voice; whispering for blood, whispering for revenge. When he held the blade up to the sinking sun and let its edge flare red it seemed nearly alive, far more alive than he had felt in years.

When the time came, they would die together, and so he kept it close like his only friend.

**II: The Living Dream**

Someone had come along and fixed up this place, and it was nearly as good as new. He sat in the swing and pushed himself back and forth, his too-long legs leaving lines and shapes like strange symbols in the sand. There were no children; it was a school day. He was glad, for it let him feel childlike, made him feel like the past had been nothing more than a very bad dream.

He closed his eyes, hunched his shoulders, drew up his knees into his shapeless coat. From a distance he might have been some ridiculous scarecrow, a disfigured shape held together only by mere flesh and bones. For a moment he panicked; he had left the sword at home, how silly, how silly of him—the world faded, flashed, faded, flashed, and he fell back with a cry—

A hand touched him on his shoulder. This time the shadows had lengthened, lying thick upon the ground like snow, like the implacable fall of time. In the dark the other's face was as a paper mask, eyes lightless holes into a void, and so he turned and ran, hearing only the vague suggestions of words in the air, thankfully bereft of meaning.

He locked the door; sank down with his back against it. But he was glad for the human contact, if only to remind himself that he was not a ghost, no matter how the world seemed sometimes only as stable as a fairy's wing, or a bird in flight, or—

The sword was, somehow, there, cold steel warming in his shaking grip. He thought of using it, making the pain go away. The woman's voice whined in his ear; it had been beloved once, until the years had wrung the love from it, made it sharp and shrill. _You can't, you can't, _she said, she had said other things before, until he had started forgetting, first little things like her hair and the color of her eyes, and started remembering _those memories _instead.

He turned away from them, cold and frightened, for they made him _feel _in a way that made that pleasantly flickering warmth in his heart (_dangerous but not too dangerous) _flare up, made it _burn. _

_Unfair, unfair, _he heard, and with a start he realized it was his own voice, soft and murmuring with patience deadly enough to carve down mountains. With an audible sound he slapped a hand over his mouth, as though it was enough to unsay the words, unthink the thoughts flowering within him.

**III: The Dead Land**

_The sky had been glowing orange that night. _

He remembered, stitching the memories together with brutal force, until his fingers cut deep red crescents into the flesh of his palms.

…_a sound, a blast of noise, like the doors of hell slamming open and letting loose every miserable thing that thrived in there in a raging frenzy—_

_People in the streets, running out, their shadows cutting black lines into the uneven light. They were crying, shouting, whispering, and it was all being woven into some vast cacophony of noise that went right through his head like a well-honed knife. He staggered, clutching at the doorframe, not understanding, afraid…_alone.

And even then it hadn't been loneliness, just the _fear _of loneliness…he looked around at the house around him, with its overturned and broken furniture like dead bodies beneath their white shrouds. Dust glittered in the new morning like the debris and glass that had come falling through the air, turning the street bright and metallic and golden in that horrible orange glow.

There was always some beauty to be found, he thought, if you looked hard enough. That was hardly a sign of hope, as someone had once tried to tell him; it was only a sign that the world was harsh and unjust enough to smile even in the face of sorrow.

**IV: The Meeting**

He slotted the bright, shining stones into their holders methodically. Beauty and destruction, once more blatantly hand in hand. The sword went into its sheath, silky-smooth. He considered, briefly, going to the playground. Saying goodbye to whatever innocent remnant of him lived there still.

He went, and left the door standing open. His feet trod the long familiar path to destruction. At the end of it—

"Hello," she said, "How can I help you?" She was dark-haired, pretty, outlined in sunlight and hadn't life blessed her? Her hands were long and white, but they were dirty hands, killer's hands. Before her smile could begin to fade he lashed out at them, desperate to make them their true color, peel back the perfect skin to show the scarlet and mortal blood beneath.

There was a cut that quickly filled up with red—but before he could see it spill over she was at his throat. She couldn't understand—it was in the bewildered, angry pity in her eyes, the way she hesitated, just a little, holding back from the final blow.

"You're only a boy," she said. "Why?" _Because I _can _help you, _her open, gentle face pleaded. _Just tell me what's wrong. _This was a woman who had saved the world and wanted to go on saving it still. So it was with a sense of perverse pleasure he told her, "My mother died in a reactor explosion," and watched her go still and shocked.

_An orange glow in the night sky. As though led by a string he went down the yellow glassy road and saw the crumpled shell of the reactor before the leaping flames, like some weird origami animal shaped by a careless and brutal hand. He finally did scream then, let his tears out, only he was only one out of a dozen dozen and it was all lost in the hot and hellish din. _

Bang! And then his mother died, for no reason, or no reason that had made sense to a scared little boy. Maybe she died quickly, when the metal shards ripped through her; or maybe slowly, terribly, as the flames ate away her life. Either way, there was no sorry, no language pretty enough to take away the ugliness of the words.

He remained silent, for what he did not say rang between them as loud as if he had screamed, and bit by bit her curled fingers relaxed and let him go.

He darted forward, grabbed the sword, put his hand over the stones, full with the furious rushing life of the planet, and as she turned he greeted her with a palm full of fire. Her eyes widened, and they went down together. Now he saw her face as a mirror of his own; the dark eyes hurting, the mouth bent into the shape of pain. He tightened his burning hands around her throat.

Almost, almost; before she struck again, and the night crashed down early, sweeping him away in a sea of darkness.

**V: Endgame**

She looked at the curled up body on the path, still breathing lightly, shallowly. A large bruise slowly darkened the side of its pale neck. At least this was one that she hadn't killed.

_We were doing what we thought was right, _she tried to offer, but every way she tried the words came out raw and ugly in her mouth. She thought of the WEAPONs, hulking shambling children born from the earth—blindly destructive, blind with rage, striking down the cities that were to them little more than blights upon their mother's body. Back when she had been living on anger and scarred both in and out being the Planet's weapon was like a light in a very dark night. For a long time now she had put that part of herself away, tried to focus on the future. Things were different. She wasn't just doing what she thought was right; she was actually doing something right, taking in the children, giving them some semblance of what they had before their parents died.

Yet it wasn't just a question of mathematics. It was impossible to say that she should be forgiven because she had hurt many but made up by helping many more. So she bent and scooped up the slim lanky body, heavier than she had expected, but no heavier than the weight upon her heart. His face was young, serene, and didn't look too different from the other children she had opened herself and her house to. Abruptly she wondered of the others she had inadvertently wounded—unhappy expressions lost in an adoring crowd, cheering on: _AVALANCHE, the heroes that had saved the world—_

AVALANCHE, former terrorists.

With long steps she walked towards the house, the boy cradled close. When he woke up there would be chaos. Perhaps he would fight her again, cut her again with his words. She would feed him and heal him and endure.

It was her penance.

_-end-_


End file.
